#cosexual

[ipsogender]

Alternative language for biology of sex without using "hermaphrodite"

So, you're worldbuilding a scifi alien species or a fantasy race that can reproduce as both male and female. Or you're a biologist or science educator. And you want what you're writing/making to be inclusive to intersex people.

The term hermaphrodite in biology refers to species that can reproduce as both male or female. The problem is it's also a slur when used against intersex people (it's also incorrect - we're not hermaphrodites). I recently polled other intersex folks informally and a plurality were fine with the h-word being used with the correct meaning in appropriate contexts. But the qualitative feedback I got was, all things equal, most people who wrote to me said they'd just be happier seeing the term less.

So here is a glossary of words you can use to talk about the biology of sex without invoking the h-word:

Gonochoric species where individuals (typically) reproduce only as either male or female. This means the species produces two types of gametes that have different sizes, and conventionally the larger is female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and -choric for separated/distinct. Note that "non-gonochoric" includes both hermaphroditic species and those that can reproduce asexually (e.g. parthenogenesis).

Gonosyne: species where individuals (typically) can reproduce as both male or female. Gono- for generation/reproduction and syne for together/combined. This is a term I have coined to be an alternative to hermaphrodite.

Types of gonosyny: it's common to categorize different forms of gonosyny based on temporality and how many gonads an individual has.

Grouping by Temporality:

Cosex: species where individuals can reproduce as both male and female simultaneously. Alternative terms: cosexual, simultaneous hermaphrodism. For example: land snails/slugs typically mate by linking up both pairs of genitals.

Dichosex: gonosynic species where individuals reproduce as male and female at different times in their lives. Protandrous species start as male then switch to female; protogynous start female then switch to male. Some species cycle between the two (serial/bidirectional hermaphrodism/disexuality). Alternative terms: dichosexual, dichogamous, sequential hermaphrodism. I coined this one after feedback that "dichogamous" was not intuitive to non-botanists, keeping dicho- (in two parts/paired) for simplicity. Example animal: clownfish (the Finding Nemo fish).

Grouping by Gonads:

Digonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female because they have separate male and female gonads. Digony can be cosex or dichosex. In botany the term monoecious is used for flowering plants. For example: barnacles have their ovaries in the base of their body, and testes in the back of their head.

Syngonic: species that can reproduce as both male and female, because their gonads can produce both male and female gametes. Alternative terms: syncoecious, monoclinous, ambisexual. (Note ambisexual has other meanings.) Syngony can be cosex or dichosex. In dichosexual species the gonad changes which gametes it produces when the individual changes sex. For example: land slugs have a single gonad (ovotestis).

Together this makes four categories. Examples come from: Sex change in plants and animals: a unified perspective.

Syngonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Black-jack daisy, Lady of the Night cactus; mangrove killifish, stubby-root nematode.

Syngonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny within the same flower/gonad. Examples: Bromelia chrysantha, grape ivy; California sheephead fish, common limpet.

Digonic cosexual. Simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: bitter melon, jaraguá grass; barnacles, flatworms.

Digonic dichosexual. Non-simultaneous gonosyny from different flowers/gonads. Examples: papaya, catsfoot; staghorn coral, earthworm.

Hope this is helpful! I have two little notes I want to add on: Note on "non-gonochoric": it's possible this could also include isogamous speries? There's some ambiguity in use. Isogamy refers to sexual reproduction where you don't have two different sized gametes - instead it's two identically sized gametes that are getting combined. This is the standard amongst unicellular eukaryotes and very common in fungi.

Note on ambisexual: this is the term that Ursula K LeGuin used for the dichosexual aliens in the Left Hand of Darkness. The term in biology these days refers to undifferentiated (immature) tissue that has yet to develop into a given sex - e.g. a human embryo has ambisexual gonads until sexual differentiation later on in development. The term ambisexual has a ton of other meanings in other contexts such as a sexual orientation. For this reason I'd personally avoid it.

[intersexbookclub]

Summary: Power to Yield (Feb 2024)

We assembled on 2024-03-01 to talk about our February book pick: Power To Yield and Other Stories by intersex author Bogi Takács. The book is a collection of science fiction & fantasy short stories.

This was a first for our book club in that we spent the whole session gushing about the book. Everybody loved it. We haven’t been giving books ratings thus far but this one would get a 5/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟.

Overall takes:

vic: I loved it, I loved it so much. The stories all felt so different. Disability and intersex were very normalized and not shoehorned, it just felt so good. 

Michelle: the worlds in this book felt so richly crafted. This book reminded me that short stories can be the bomb! I got gender euphoria from seeing characters use neopronouns!!! So refreshing and exciting to see them in text. That was how I got started with them, I wrote characters like that and then I was like.... moi? It’s just so joyfully affirming. 

Bnuuy: I only read “Folded into tendril and leaf” and started "The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade" but it deeply impressed me. 

Elizabeth: I'm not really a short story person. I find I take a while to get immersed in a book, and I don't like the switching from story to story so much. And as someone who does not like the short story genre, I liked this collection, which I feel says a lot. 

Intersex themes:

Intersex representation throughout the book that feels both casual and important at the same time. It’s normalized in a way that feels tremendously validating. Takács also importantly depicts a variety of intersex characters in terms of gender (binary vs genderqueer), type of variation, and age. Folded into tendril and leaf depicts a romance with an intersex character that does not sexualize or fetishize being intersex. ❤️

Intersex sea creatures, always a classic 🦑 - clear example in the Good Friday story.

Plants as intersex. 🍃 A bunch of stories throughout the book involved somebody turning into a plant. We talked about how this turned out to be a fruitful (lol) metaphor since so many plants are cosexual or dichogamous, there’s so much variety and difference in plant reproduction and it disrupts our ideas of what sex is. Bnuuy pointed out that botany can also just be an affirming thing for intersex people to learn about, e.g. a flower with both male and female reproductive parts is called a “perfect flower”! It’s valued rather than described as a deficiency.

In the fantasy story Power To Yield, the doctor feels the pain of his patients as he treats them, which per Elizabeth: “feels like such an intersex and/or disability fantasy”. Pain may not always be avoided but having doctors feel and be aware of our pain would change the patient-doctor dynamic so much.

Neopronouns: there are a lot of neopronouns used in a variety of settings for a variety of characters, disrupting ideas of gender and sex in ways that felt joyfully inclusive and affirming. As Michelle put it: “we get a glimpse of the world outside the binary in a kind of ecstatic way. Like, hey, you don't have to be male or female. You can be intersex and something else. And you can be trans. Like, it's just so, like, joyfully affirming. Genuinely like a rainbow-colored feeling.” 🌈 (also, reading neopronouns in context is a great way to learn how to use them!)

Other themes:

System change happens through people relating to each other differently. As vic put it: “Bogi really showed that the people are the system and the system is made of people”. Such as in the Spy-Turns-Into-A-Plant story the ways that Hasidic people were combining old and new cultural practices to include intersex & genderqueer people, in the Solidarity Fair story everybody noticed the trader was missing, and in Power To Yield there’s a need for all of the possible neurotypes. 

Mentorship: the book defies the conventions of the mentorship trope. A lot of times in media, mentors are marked for death once their apprentice has learnt what they need, but here the mentors stick around and continue to be in their apprentices’ lives in different ways.

Survival stories that were communal in mindset rather than rugged individuals. We see characters putting the pieces back together after catastrophic events such as wars and invasions. There’s an optimism that we can survive catastrophe. We liked the depictions of joy and competence. Michelle identified a Talmudic theme of "You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”, throughout the book.

Other things we liked:

The prose. Michelle praised it as approachable. Xe also commented: “Bogi has an authorial voice that feels well read. People who don't read so much have a particular style and it can be hard to read, they have a hard time expressing themselves... and this was the opposite of that!”

Disability representation that felt realistic. For example, a character being constantly exhausted due to being drained of blood, and a character worried about breaking an ankle while walking through uneven terrain. Disability wasn’t skimmed over nor was it romanticized, just treated with good humour as a quotidian kind of limitation.

Representation of old people. There’s a big range of characters’ life stages. Old characters are active and given things to do, and got to have personalities beyond “old”. For example, the old sociologist in the solidarity fair story was open-minded and competent. She didn’t want to sit around and be a granny. 

Not being US-centric: in speculative fiction there’s a way of talking about or relating to things that can feel very American (vic: “even though they’re in space, they act as though they’re in California”) and Takács doesn’t do this, which we appreciated. As Michelle put it: “There’s a definite immigrant vibe to the book.”

Representation of Jewish characters. Not everybody could relate to the Orthodox Jews but not every story needs to be relatable.

All these forms of representation come together. As vic put it: “the disability politics, intersex, the trans stuff… It all felt so normal and was incorporated in a way that felt so seamless. It felt really good reading it,  didn't feel like any of it was shoehorned in.. Just like, yep, normal people living their normal lives and we're not making anyone feel weird about their differences. Usually with books that have people that are different from the mainstream in some way it's kind of clunky: even if it's #OwnVoices, it still reads as self-conscious and apologetic. But this book all read very un-self-conscious and very comfortable.”

What we didn’t like:

Elizabeth doesn’t like the order in which the stories were presented. Ze felt the first few stories were fine but didn’t showcase what the book has to offer. Ze recommended to the group to start with:

"Folded into tendril and leaf" (medium length)

"The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade" (medium length)

"The ladybug, in flight" (very short)

"Power to yield" (novelette)

Bnuuy and vic started reading with Elizabeth’s recommended stories, and this may have influenced the conversation.

After the book discussion, vic went back and re-read the stories in order, and mentioned they also didn’t vibe with the order of the stories as presented in the book.

Stories of note:

“Folded into Tendril And Leaf”: we liked the water caltrop description and visualization. It was Elizabeth’s favourite: “The reason I put that on my list of recommendations is it was just such a big, warm hug of fiction. It's such a tender story, but at the same time it grapples with really serious stuff. I've brought it up before that I'm a sucker for any sort of intersex at puberty story because that's the kind of intersex I am. But also the intersex people as plants theme really landed here.” Elizabeth also praised how there was a character who realized their privilege that they didn't have to follow the news.

“The 1st interspecies solidarity fair and parade”: we liked the realism of the organizing, and we all wanted stories from this setting, especially about the aliens that were genocide survivors. It was Bnuuy’s favourite, enjoying its comedy and how it flips stereotypes of Gen Z/Alpha by having them be the older generation in this future. The depiction of an alien who presents as though she is a cat was amusing; vic described it as: “Yeah, the image of a gigantic, floating metallic orb  meowing so that it can be more relatable to humans is, I think, a huge non-binary mood.”

“Power to Yield”: we appreciated the depiction of autistic special interest (and it has its own word: abuwen!) that is realistic without either romanticizing or spectacularizing it. It shows how a special interest can happen suddenly, it can be overpowering, it can sometimes be inappropriate, it can be unpleasant for the person as they neglect other parts of their life. We could all relate. The depiction of asexual BDSM also stood out; per vic: “oh, I guess it can not be a sex thing!”

“The Ladybug, in Flight”: Michelle was horrified (in a good way) by the slow consensual cannibalism. Whereas vic read that one as practical and utilitarian in an autistic way, like sometimes autistic people will horrify others for practical things.

“Volatile Patterns”: Michelle is very crafty and this was xer favourite: “the story talks about  reappropriating motifs and being like, no, you're doing it wrong. We can show you how to do it right. It's fine. Just stop doing it the wrong way. Like, especially clothing attacking people was very funny to me because it reminded me of a game called Fall in London, where in certain areas of the world, everything is sentient.”

“A Technical Term, Like Privilege”: This one vic highlighted as a favourite: “I often feel sad about the place where I live, because it is a rental and it's not getting cared for the way it deserves to be. So the metaphor of the house needing your blood was apt. I've read a few rental horror metaphors, and they were all bad. So I was really happy to read this one.” Also, the disability representation: “when the character in the house story came up with a good, reasonable solution and then was SHOT DOWN it was so real”.

Overall: out of all the books we’ve read thus far for the book club, this is the one everybody was most positive about. It was a joy to read and we recommend it! 💜

[ipso-faculty]

I’m so honored you used my pride snail as your profile pic! I don’t even h now what to say that’s so freaking cool! (I’m being genuine this is so cool!)

Awww thanks for making it!!! 💛 I love gastropods, they are such lovely creatures! 🥺 Their little eye stalks 🥺 and their giant foot 🥺

Also I love using them as examples of how sex in nature is so seldom like what humans do 😁 Because they're so often cosexual, their mating processes look so beautiful, and their genitals are on their neck. 💯

💛🐌💛

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Vicuñas live in cosexual groups usually containing 1 male, 3-10 females, and their offspring.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[oh-dear-so-queer]

Although male Gorillas (especially younger animals) sometimes mount each other in cosexual groups, homosexuality occurs most commonly in all-male groups, where probably more than 90 percent of all same-sex activity between males takes place.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[sapphixrey]

Hey so, great blog, you're the best, but I was wondering if perhaps you couldn't use non-ace/non-aro because it carries strong negative connotations against the ace and aro communities (I feel calling myself non-aro ace is really... 'othering' towards all the amazing aro people). I know you don't like allo, so can I suggest coromantic and cosexual? (coro and cose). They sound good and mean well. What's your thoughts? Thanks!

I hate using non-aro/non-ace, but they won't let us use any other words and I'm tired

[timomaraus]

April 23, 2019

CBS News Pete Buttigieg on the presidency as a “moral office” (Editor’s Note: I’m not quite sure Mayor Pete is watching the same show as the rest of us.)

CNN White House tells official not to testify about security clearances (Editor’s Note: Right. Because why should Congress have any reason to know who’s being granted access to top secret information?)

Washington Post ‘How cosexual are you?’: Why some prefer Lover Earth to Mother Earth (Editor’s Note: Is this like one of those Cialis ads where the couples bathtub just appears out of nowhere in the middle of the rainforest? Have you ever wondered how they got the plumbing to those things?)

CNN 8 airplanes converted into restaurants (Editor’s Note: Because if there’s one place renowned for having great food, it’s an airplane.)

CNN What the release of spa surveillance videos could mean for Robert Kraft (Editor’s Note: It could mean coming face-to-face with a long-ignored realization of just how far he’s let his body go.)

CBS News Spike in Phoenix officer-involved shooting (Editor’s Note: Spike Lee was in officer-involved shootings? That’s terrible!)

NBC News We still don’t know why Mueller didn’t charge Trump with obstruction (Editor’s Note: Of course we do--he can’t charge him under DOJ guidelines. That’s just a headline writer who couldn’t be bothered to even read the summaries of the Mueller report. Kind of like Bill Barr.)

NBC News Court says it’s illegal to chalk your tires to enforce parking rules (Editor’s Note: I want refunds for many clear instances of police enchalkment!)

NBC News I tried “tapping” to beat my sugar addiction — here’s what happened (Editor’s Note: Carpal tunnel syndrome.)

NBC News Inside Earth, scientists find weird blobs and huge mountains (Editor’s Note: They’d likely find the same if they went on a journey to the center of my stomach.)

CNN Permanent daylight savings time and later school starts could affect health (Editor’s Note: For exactly how long? Once daylight savings time is permanent, how will anyone know it’s not regular time?)

NBC News Easter Bunny defends woman in brawl (Editor’s Note: That is one bad-ass bunny.)

[ipsogender]

Asking fellow intersex people about use of h-word in biology

Hello fellow intersex tumblr people! I wanna get a sense of how other intersex people feel about the use of the h-word in biology and what alternatives, if any, should be used, to ensure that intersex people feel comfortable when there's discussion of species that reproduce as both male and female.

I'm asking both as a co-organizer of @intersexbookclub (plenty of scifi and fantasy have aliens/fantasy species that reproduce as both male & female) and as somebody who works as a science educator. There is an explanation of alternative terms below the poll if they're new to you! Please only vote if you know you are intersex.

Explanation of Alternative Terms

Biologists distinguish two types of h-word:

Simultaneous H-word. Species that can reproduce as both male and female at the same time. Botanists call this "cosexual" so there's already an alternate word for this.

Sequential H-word. Species that can reproduce both ways, but only one way at a time. Botanists call this "dichogamous" so again, alternate word available!

But to the best of my knowledge, there's no existing alternate word for referring to both cosexual and dichogamous species.

The opposite of the h-word in biology is gonochoric, which refers to species that reproduce sexually but individuals are either female or male.

The term "non-gonochoric" gets used in the scientific literature to refer species that are cosexual, dichogamous, or who reproduce asexually (e.g. through parthenogenisis).

I spent a bunch of time brainstorming ideas for coining a term to replace the role of the h-word in biology. The term I'm happiest with is gonosyne, designed to contrast with gonochoric. Gonochoric comes from old Greek affixes (gono- for generation, now associated with reproduction; -choric for separated). Whereas syn- refers to together/combined, so gonosyne for together/combined gonads.

Let me know what makes sense for you, if you have questions, or feedback!

[intersexbookclub]

Intersex Book Club reviews The Deep

Last week we convened for a lovely discussion of The Deep by Rivers Solomon. Before I proceed to a summary of our thoughts on the book, I (@ipsogender) have a few things I wanna make clear to perisex (non-intersex) readers upfront:

PSA: Intersex is not the same as biological hermaphrodism. Biological hermaphrodism means members of a given species can reproduce as both male or female, whether at the same time (simultaneous hermaphrodism / cosexuality) or one at a time (sequential hermaphroditism / dichogamy).

Intersex humans cannot reproduce as both male and female. Intersex means we have primary and/or secondary sex characteristics that deviate from what is considered “typical” for our species. Intersex is a big umbrella term comprising dozens of known intersex variations. Common kinds of intersex presentations in humans include female humans with well-developed facial hair and male humans with developed breasts. Many intersex people can reproduce, but many intersex people struggle with infertility. Do not use the h-word to refer to intersex humans. It is a slur when used to refer to intersex people. [/END PSA]

Moving onto the discussion summary (mild spoilers after the cut):

WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK INTERSEX

It’s written by an openly intersex author \o/

Like in The Fortunate Fall we an intersex author using sea creatures as a metaphor for intersex (mermaids this time). As we talked about there it’s a rich source of metaphor for fiction writers since the ocean is a place that is foreign yet familiar.

In The Deep, there is an discussion of how humans let their genitals hang out, unlike the mermaids (and most sea creatures) who have internal genitals. We discussed that the mermaid as metaphor for intersex people allows for a sort of “Schrodinger’s genitals” - it allows for a de-emphasis on genitals since they are hidden while also normalizing that you could get anything if you get close enough to somebody to find out. 😉

In this book, the mermaids (waijinru) can reproduce as both male or female, and when mating can engage both at the same time - similar to how snails mate. (In biology this is known as cosexuality.) The book was very matter-of-fact in a way that attendees noted as normalizing and accessible.

Creating a fantastical species that is cosexual allows Solomon to resist and play with ideas of perinormativity, encouraging readers to think of humanoids that are not limited to perinormative ideas of sex binaries. (Please note: the waijinru themselves are not intersex, see PSA above.)

SNAPSHOT TAKES

@scifimagpie: “ ‘What if boundaries’ turned out well”

Also @scifimagpie: “It’s reverse Little Mermaid”  and it even had a comb

Élaina: The book gets at how we need to spread the grief and the joy around in society. Liked at how the book gets at how disabling it is to hold the trauma, to be the historian. It is isolating for her, even though she's venerated but the isolation can be objectifying.

vic: Rivers Solomon has a style of writing that is unapologetically themself

POSITIVES

Raw, visceral depiction of autistic experience

Queer joy! Instead of being about isolation it’s about togetherness. Instead of mortality it’s about continuity. And a happy ending!

Nuanced exploration of the tensions between community/self, grief/joy, and past/present

Despite the heavy topic, there was a buoyancy from all the sharing and love

Nice to have casual but explicit intersex representation

Subverts “The Chosen One’ trope

Has a disabled protagonist who struggles with their disability and the resolution is not cure, but social change to accommodate them! More please!

Representation of vicarious trauma. So much discussion of trauma in our society focuses only on traumas that are personally experienced. But people can be traumatized by seeing people they identify with who go experience violence. We talked about historians who study eugenics and genocides can be traumatized by it, and how in academia we don’t really have enough supports for mitigating this.

MIXED REACTIONS

Opinion was divided on the writing style but pacing/rhythm was a common complaint

Depictions of sensory experiences of waijinru. Some stuff on smelling and feeling currents and some very handwavy electric (field?) communication but still wound up feeling very human in how the world was depicted. Some of us felt it didn’t go far enough in making the waijru feel nonhuman, but vic shared the idea that the book had been written in waijinru language and translated to human for humans.

A bit of audism - characters were described as not having concepts of things until they learnt spoken language, which felt like Hellen Keller flim flam. Keller knew dozens of signs before Anne Sullivan was her teacher, and used them to communicate with her family. There was no mention of sign language though there are multiple places it would have made more sense (inter-species communication, communicating with deaf waijinru).

The post-narrative discussion. I (@ipsogender) appreciated the citational practice, particularly given calls for citational practice in music. But I hated the telephone metaphor, not only is it used to dismiss oral histories as unreliable but it also felt dismissive of Solomon’s work, and others also felt it was kind of condescending.

Some of us were put off by the trans-Atlantic slave trade being described as “the world’s greatest holocaust the world has ever known”.  Not only does this set up some sort of oppression olympics, the slave trade was atrocious in ways that were distinct from the holocaust, such as that the children of slaves were born into slavery. However, Élaina pointed out that in France right now there is an effort by black people to get French people to recognize their role in the slave trade, that it actually was a severe atrocity, and so this sort of language is invoked to convince denialists that this was in fact a massive atrocity.

NOTABLE DISCUSSIONS

The practice and methods for telling history (historiography). The book makes a subtle argument against having a historian be detached from the history & communities they are studying, that they need to be engaged and appreciate their role in it. The book also argues for spreading the load around. And we talked about how rituals can be borne from history – as vic put it, the character “Zoti [the first historian] was just a guy, y’know” and it wasn’t a given that the cultural practices of Rememberance and having one sole historian would emerge from the waijinru’s origins.

Cultural expectations of duty. Everybody in the call came from a different cultural background and we talked about differing cultural expectations of duty, such as utang na lob in Filipino culture, and how Brazil’s culture is different from Canada’s.

The book makes an argument that humans need to know where we’re from and what our histories are. We spent time talking about this both sociologically - how many settler colonists and descendents of slaves feel this lack of connection because of a lack of sense of connection to land and history - but also personally. For those of us coming from cultures that gave us a sense of historicity we talked about how it’s a double-edged sword, and how the history can feel like a drag.

Humans and forgetting mass trauma. We had a discussion about whether to remember vs re-enact in memorializing mass traumas. One participant put out an idea that historical mass traumas haunt people for a long time after, and we talked about how this isn’t necessarily the case, as humans are experts at denial. We talked about the active denial going on about the covid pandemic, how people at the start of the covid pandemic called it “unprecedented” because of how society had actively worked to forget AIDS (and previous SARS epidemics). We talked about how people and societies actively deny genocides, such as how Turks continue to deny the genocide of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds & Assyrians. Which ties back to how there’s a need for Europeans to recognize and appreciate the magnitude and horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

READ IF YOU LIKED

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

The Giver

Leviathan Falls (Expanse #9)

Works by Rivers Solomon, Akwaeke Emezi

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Kob society is complex and is organized around two types of social systems: sex-segregated herds and LEKS. (...) The other Kob antelopes also live in sex-segregated female and bachelor herds, although some Lechwe herds are cosexual.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Verreaux's Sifakas live in cosexual groups of up to 12 individuals and sometimes associate as male-female pairs. (...) Lesser Bushbabies generally live in family groups consisting of females and their offspring along with peripheral males.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Squirrel Monkeys live in troops of 20-70 animals containing a majority of females. (...) Rufous-naped Tamarins live in cosexual groups of 3-9 individuals in which usually only one male-female pair breeds; the remainder of the group consists of their offspring and unrelated adult nonbreeders.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Japanese Macaques live in cosexual troops of 20-100 individuals, subdivided into smaller matrilineal groups composed of numerous related females and several unrelated males.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Hanuman Langurs live in cosexual troops (some contain only one male) and also in all-male groups. (...) Nilgiri Langurs live in both cosexual troops (usually eight to nine monkeys each, with one or two males) and same-sex groupings (usually two or three males, occasionally more, constituting about a quarter to a third of the adult males).

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Both of these species live in cosexual groups, containing 15-40 individuals in Pigtails and up to 40-90 individuals in Crested Black Macaques.

"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - Bruce Bagemihl